Advancements in computer technology and software have enabled communication to occur almost instantaneously. For example, through email an individual in New York can receive a document, image, message, or the like from an individual in California in a matter of seconds. Such advances in technology are not limited solely to communications, but directly or indirectly affect every business and individual. For instance, industrial control systems have enabled modern factories to become partially or completely automated in many circumstances, thereby reducing costs associated with the factory and consequently passing on such cost reduction to a consumer.
To further reduce costs of production, industrial systems have become increasingly automated. For example, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) can be coupled to various machinery and control a process that requires precise timing between actions of such machinery. Additionally, precise knowledge of positioning, velocity, and/or other metrics of the machinery is required as well. To ensure accurate position and velocity information, electromechanical actuators (e.g. motors, etc.) that operate the devices typically have a sensor to detect a position of the actuator for feedback into a controlling device. In the industrial control environment, however, redundancy and fault tolerance can be extremely important to create a safe environment especially where completely automated. To this end, many safety certification standards for electromechanical actuators require additional certification testing for a sensor, additional sensors to create a redundant position operation, a brake to halt an actuator upon position sensor failure, and/or other hardware utilized to ensure safe operation of the actuator upon failure of a position sensor. All of these can create additional burden on manufacture of an electromechanical actuator as they add time to create, test, and certify the actuator, as well as add extra bulk on the actuator, extra cabling, etc. However, the market is increasingly developing more fault tolerant electromechanical actuators with addition of such expensive and time-consuming technologies resulting in a delayed time to market due to testing and development of the disparate technologies.